Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Choosing a side

I'm having a hard time trying to understand if foodies are supposed to be cultured cosmopolitans or backwards survivalists.

A few years ago I was seated in the audience waiting for an event to start when I heard the person sitting behind me declare that she and her husband "try to do everything as locally as possible." This included trying to live off locally-made food and limiting her purchases to local merchants whenever possible.

What struck me is how that statement was extremely elitist on the surface, but it bore the structure of something said by a backwater nationalist militia member who sneers at products that aren't made in America.

So which is it food-snob hipsters, do you want to eat ugly tomatoes and gamey meats from the farmers' market, or are you willing to indulge in globalist foods like Nutella, sushi and hummus?